Whatsapp Purchase Won’t Benefit Facebook’s Situation in China: Forbes

Facebook’s $19 billion USD acquisition of the messaging service company, Whatsapp, might be an ideal solution for boosting the social network’s popularity in certain international regions, but apparently won’t do much to improve its status in China, various sources suggest.

As indicated in a recent article from Forbes’ Charles Custer, the Chinese government will make little to no effort to open up to Facebook, and is likely to continue banning the website due to its potential to foster political “dissidence” and lure attention away from domestic social platforms.

Regarding whether Whatsapp itself will have any chance of gaining momentum in China and becoming more popular among Chinese audiences, Custer remained doubtful, pointing again to the political nature of things.

“The only real appeal of Whatsapp in China would be to dissidents and would-be dissidents who are concerned about their conversations on WeChat being monitored by the government,” Custer noted. “Unfortunately, this audience is one that China’s government tracks closely (for obvious reasons), so it seems likely that if these users migrated to Whatsapp in order to have a more private platform to converse on, China would eventually block Whatsapp in response.”